Leadership Vertigo – Understanding Why Leaders Go Off Course

When you write about leadership for a number of years, and especially when you receive numerous awards and recognitions for your writings and insights on leadership, it’s only natural that one of the questions you’re often asked is ‘when are you going to write a book?’ This has certainly been the case on my end – in fact, I recall one conversation I had with a friend of mine almost a year ago where in an off-the-cuff moment, he said “Tanveer, you know you have a book in you, right?”

To see such interest and demand for my writings in this larger format has certainly been gratifying, all the more so now that I have this very special news to announce (something I’m sure will put a big smile on my friend’s face, if not also hearing him say ‘I knew it!’).

Given how this blog and its readers have been the key driving force behind this pursuit, it’s only natural for me to announce here publicly the news of the release of my first leadership book, “Leadership Vertigo: Why Even the Best Leaders Go Off Course and How They Can Get Back On Track”.

To learn more about where you can pre-order or purchase this book online – both for my Canadian/US readers, as well as those outside North America – please check out this brand new leadership book page I created on my website. On this information page, you’ll not only find links to buy my book at some of the major online retailers, but you can also read some of the wonderful and generous advance praise my book has received.

Of course, when you tell people you have a book coming out, a new common question arises – what’s your book about? In this piece, I’d like to share with you the answer to that question.

What is Leadership Vertigo?

When I’ve told my inner circle of friends and colleagues the name of my new leadership book, naturally, the first question I get asked is “what is leadership vertigo?”. To answer this succinctly (you can get the more detailed answer in the book), leadership vertigo refers to the gap in perception between how we view our leadership and how those we lead experience it.

This is a common phenomenon we see in so many organizations today where – despite all the books and writings describing how we can do a better job leading our organizations, not to mention the numerous studies pinpointing the exact causes behind the current decline in employee engagement levels – leaders are still not doing a better job connecting, understanding, and relating to those under their care.

The easy and obvious answers we might proffer are that either leaders are simply too busy or too focused on the short-term to affect the changes they need to improve working conditions. Or worse, that we simply assume they don’t care about the realities their employees face.

And yet, we can easily debunk these assumptions by the simple fact of the demand out there for more leadership books, training programs, degrees, conferences, and so forth by these very leaders who do in fact want to learn how they can become the kind of leader their employees need them to be to help them succeed in their collective efforts.

That’s also why there’s so much being written and discussed about the biographies and success stories of those leaders we hold in high esteem – it’s our hope that in examining their lives, we might gleam from their experiences and examples how we might replicate their successes in our own organization.

So if there is in fact a strong drive and interest to improve how we lead our teams and organizations, if we are making efforts to educate ourselves about what we need to be doing more of and what we need to stop doing, why aren’t more leaders doing a better job creating an environment in their organization where their employees succeed and thrive?

This is the very basis of this book – of looking into understanding how the perceptual phenomenon of leadership vertigo can convince leaders that they are doing what’s necessary to help their employees and organization to succeed at achieving their shared purpose, and yet that’s not at all what their employees are experiencing or need to achieve their goals.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for the past few years, you may recall the following recurring themes on my blog:

• about the importance of community to engendering a sense of belonging and shared purpose
• of being mindful for how we show up in those daily interactions with those we lead
• of increasing our awareness of the realities our employees face in our organization and what it’s like to work under us
• and finally, of building and sustaining relationships with our employees so that they can understand the value and importance of their contributions to our shared purpose.

In this book, we refer to these ideas as the four leadership principles of Build Community, Develop Competence, Earn Credibility, and Cultivate Compassion, principles that will help to both address and prevent you from going off course in terms of what you want to achieve through your leadership.

A VERY Special Leadership Series to celebrate the release of my first leadership book

Naturally, the release of my first leadership book is cause for celebration, which is why starting next week, I’ve planned a VERY SPECIAL month-long leadership series that will explore some of the leadership principles discussed in my book.

For this special series, I had the idea to reach out to some of the people in the leadership sphere who I admire and respect and ask them to participate in a special series where each of them would share their own insights on one of the leadership principles discussed in my book. To say that I was honoured, grateful and humbled by their willingness to join me in celebrating the release of my first leadership book would be an understatement.

Indeed, if there was a leadership version of a fantasy hockey/football league, these people would definitely be members of my dream team.

And with that, I’d like to now share with you an overview of this special leadership series starting next week:

To start off the series, Doug Conant, Chairman of Avon Products as well as Chairman of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute (KELI) at Northwestern University, the retired CEO and President of Campbell Soup Company, and author of the bestseller “TouchPoints” examines at the leadership principle “Build Community” in his piece “The 3 Things Leaders Must Do To Build Meaningful Communities”.

Next up is Liz Wiseman, bestselling author of “Multipliers”, former executive at Oracle and president of the leadership research firm, The Wiseman Group,who will look at the leadership principle “Develop Competence” in her piece “Got Leadership Vertigo? Get Vulnerable”.

The third part of this series comes from Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, internationally renowned leadership thought leaders and the authors of the international bestseller “The Leadership Challenge”, who discuss some of their research findings revolving around the third leadership principle from my book “Earn Credibility” in their piece, “Credibility Is The Foundation Of Leadership”.

And finally, to round up this look at the four leadership principles discussed in my book will be a special piece written by myself where I’ll look at the importance of the fourth leadership principle, “Cultivate Compassion” in my piece, “Compassion – A Cornerstone In Today’s Leadership”.

As a special bonus to end this month-long series to celebrate the release of my first leadership book, I’ll be releasing a very special episode of my leadership podcast show, “Leadership Biz Cafe” where guest host David Burkus, author of “The Myths of Creativity” and contributor to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review will turn the tables and have me as the guest on my show where I will discuss with him some of the leadership insights I’ve written about in my book.

As you can see, this month-long celebration of my first book will be an incredible, thought-provoking and insightful series where you will learn from some of the leadership field’s top experts of how we can all do a better job serving those under our care.

I hope you’ll join us in this exploration of coming to a better understanding of the realities of leadership today, as well as the celebration of the release of my first leadership book, “Leadership Vertigo”.

It’s going to be an amazing, memorable ride.